


champagne kisses

by freloux



Category: Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 17:40:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8854747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: She just...wants things, is the thing.





	

It's kind of strange in the beginning, having H.G. around. He still goes through doorways and walks around objects that are in the way. Lenore tries to tell him that there are shortcuts, that he doesn't have to. That he can just float through them. Then she stops putting in that effort. She has to remind herself that he's not used to this the way she is.

***

She notices that he does little things to ground himself. Not just the aforementioned ghosting issues, but other things as well. It's the small things she picks up on at first. The way his forehead creases when he's holding something. Concentrating. Or the way he still writes things down instead of just willing them to appear. He always says no when Lenore asks if he wants to go haunting with her, even when she tells him that it will be fun because Edgar gets scared _every time_. (You'd think the dude would have gotten used to it by now...after all she's been living in his attic for the past _mumble mumble_ number of years.)

The bigger things are more obvious, like how he spends a lot of time in his room. Lenore knows he's an introvert, but even this seems excessive. The few times she sees him - for dinner, usually - he's very cordial, if a little formal, and just plain shy overall.

There are some things left over from before, though. He still calls her "my dear Lenore." Lenore gets a tingly feeling every time, especially when he leaves off her name and just calls her "my dear."

Like she's his.

***

Lenore is a curious person. (Ghost? Being?) It's her curiosity that tends to get her into trouble. She just does things to see what would happen if they did. Usually it's just to make Edgar mad, or to subtly annoy Annabel Lee. (She loves the girl, but it's also fun to just have _fun_ sometimes.)

But then there are times where she doesn't do things on purpose, and just follows them when they happen.

Like that time she ends up in H.G.'s room. Well, workshop, really. She’s just floating through walls, like she does, and ends up at the far end of the house before she really realizes what happened.

The place is a mess. Like. Oh my god. Lenore knows she's a messy person: she has a habit of just throwing things on the floor of her attic at the end of the day, which creates a series of piles. (" _Organized_ piles," she tried to explain to Edgar before he said that that's not a thing and please leave me alone because I'm trying to finish this short story.)

But this is, like, the next level of mess. It's mostly made up of boxes, some of which are haphazardly labeled in either scrawling handwriting or with symbols she's not even going to try to decipher. Some of them aren't even labeled at all. The boxes are joined by steamer trunks, which are further joined by gears and levers and buttons of all shapes and sizes. There are machines everywhere, too. There are tiny machines that make little ticking noises, and large machines that are covered by a thick layer of dust. (Lenore is suddenly extra-grateful that she's a ghost, otherwise she'd be sneezing like _mad_.) The windows are open, which lets in squares of light that glint off the bronze and brass and unidentifiable metal.

Lenore can't guess what all those machines might do. She read _Popular Mechanics_ exactly once (see also: aforementioned curiosity) before abandoning it for the new issue of _Allure_. She's much more interested in the Best of Beauty Awards.

Or was, until now. It's because of H.G.

He's bent over one of the many machines, working. He's taken off that dorky little vest thing he always wears and left it folded over a nearby wire mobile that spins lazily every so often.

She can see he has very nice muscles, now that she's looking. And wow damn son, they stand out even more because he's all sweaty so his shirt is stuck to him. Lenore just hovers there, floating, watching. This time it's not even to be scary or ghost-y or annoying, she's just...entranced? Yeah, entranced, even though that sounds like a word Edgar might use and she tends to avoid things that Edgar might use, just out of principle.

Every so often, H.G. makes this grunting/groaning noise that really works up that tingly feeling Lenore has become accustomed to having whenever she's around him. Usually that feeling just sits on her skin, making her feel all heightened and silly. Now, though, it's traveled, localized. It becomes this dark, warm thing that sits low in her stomach and even lower still, where it changes into something wet and pulsing.

As good as it is, it makes Lenore feel weird as well. Human. An echo of the state she was in, long ago.

She wants to say something, ask H.G. what's going on because he of all people would probably know, what with all those nerdy books he wrote and the research he likes to do. But just as she's about to open her mouth, a breeze floats in through the windows and lifts up her skirt just enough that it makes a kind of _swoosh_ sound.

H.G. turns around, breathing hard. Oh god he's wearing those really awful goggles. Lenore is caught between wanting to insult him and wanting -

The thought gets carried away by the breeze. H.G. is taking off those goggles now, anyway. "Lenore!" Surprised, confused, maybe a bit annoyed?

Regardless, he doesn't put "my dear" before her name. So now Lenore just feels really awkward. Especially since she's got this warm, throbbing feeling between her legs that's only just starting to fade, leaving behind a kind of gross, cold tackiness. It's like she's done something wrong without even knowing what that something might be.

***

He avoids her even more after that. Even though Lenore could technically just float right back into his workshop, there's an invisible VERBOTEN sign across that whole area now. Off limits, shut down, locked away.

Just like H.G. himself.

***

It goes on like this for maybe a couple of months. Lenore doesn't keep track of time anymore since becoming a ghost, but that's how long it feels like.

Finally she can't take it anymore. She misses him, which is the weirdest thing since they didn't even have that much time together at that infamous party, and since he's kept to himself for the most part since he's been back in her (after)life.

So she floats back into his workshop and actually says something instead of just lingering.

"Look, I'm sorry I bothered you," she starts. She's doing this the sarcastic, deflective way. Not just because it's instinct, but because it's easier. "I didn't mean to. Seriously."

No way she's going to admit that she misses him. She traces an absent finger through the dust cloaked over one of his machines, waiting for him to respond. He takes off the goggles that were sitting on his forehead and rubs at them cautiously with the hem of his dress shirt.

Ok, so...silence. Silence isn't good for her. It makes her feel awkward and compelled to just start talking, which is never a good thing because then she might actually, like, say something about feelings or whatever.

Thankfully the silence doesn't last long. "You're fine, Lenore," he says, pushing the goggles back up to his forehead. “You just surprised me, is all.”

Oh, good. Especially since he said her name in this new, awesome way. A way that makes it sound like the "dear" was there all along.

***

They come to a kind of agreement, then. She gets to hang out in his workshop, and he actually goes haunting with her a couple of times.

He tinkers with that machine of his while they chat. Lenore hovers on the edge of one of the steamer trunks, swinging her legs, and just watches him work. She's definitely not going to interrupt _that_ , especially since he looks so good while he does it. (So what if she likes a little eye candy every once in awhile. Definitely doesn't mean anything. No, nothing at all.)

"So how exactly does this thing work?" she asks one day, more out of boredom than anything else. Not that she's bored by being with him - like, no way, furthest thing from that - but because it feels kinda like she's missing something. And that's the worst thing ever, to have curiosity unsatisfied.

"It's - it's actually quite easy," H.G. says. "You just." He swallows, licks his lips. "You just kind of slot things together. In the right way. It gets to the point where you don't even think about it anymore, it becomes automatic."

"Show me," Lenore responds, simple as anything. That weird tinglyness is back full-force. Not just between her legs, but - oh. In her chest. That's even weirder. It's her heart, throbbing so hard she's surprised he can't hear it, feel it.

He gestures to the machine as if to say _go ahead_. So she floats of off the steamer trunk to land in front of the...thing, whatever it is. It’s about as tall as she is, with many levers and a few exposed gears. Lenore touches the levers cautiously. It's as if she's touching some part of him: they're still warm from his touch.

She can feel him behind her. This warm presence. His breath tickles the back of her neck and she shivers, goosebumps prickling up along her skin. He doesn't say anything, just watches her stroke the machine. Push buttons. Listens to her excited laugh with each whirr, beep, pulse.

Lenore moves her hands lower, to the levers that are sticking out at waist level, and tries to pull them downward. She groans in frustration: they're stuck.

"Here," he says and puts his hands over hers so the two of them can slide the levers into the little notches waiting for them at the base of the machine.

_Click._

"See?" H.G. says. Proud, accomplished, with a flavor of something else underneath. Uncertainty, maybe. "Proper slots."

"Right. Proper slots," Lenore repeats.

His fingers are still nested in the spaces between hers, the two of them holding the levers together. And he's still standing behind her. Warmth seems to extend up from the machine into her body, blossoming heat between her legs. She can feel his heartbeat at her back. Oh, that's _definitely_ weird. Lenore wonders what's happening to him. If it's the same thing that's happening to her, even though she couldn't explain what that might be herself.

New warmth, now - he's kissing her neck. The sensation is so strong against her overheated skin that it's like a force itself, caught between her skin and his mouth. His beard kind of tickles, but in the best possible way.

"What are you doing?" Lenore asks, quiet. She's so gentle about it, but it pops this silvery soap bubble of a moment before it even had a chance to grow. He steps back, snatches his hands away from hers, and whirls around to absorb himself in a thick book she's been meaning to ask him about.

She knows she can't ask him about it now.

So instead she feels her heartbeat slow to a stop and her body become weightless again, enabling her to float away, through the walls like they - like she - mean nothing at all.

***

She just...wants things, is the thing. He’ll be talking and she’ll just stare at his mouth instead of paying attention. Remembering how it felt when he kissed her neck. Imagining what his mouth would feel like on hers.

Sometimes the wanting becomes darker and more visceral, matched to that strange little pulse inside her.

She wants.

She wonders.

***

She wants and she wonders. And there are suggestions that he might want her, might wonder about her as well.

See, there’s a book that she sees sometimes at various places in his workshop. Left abandoned now on that shelf, now on that trunk, now tossed in that corner. It’s this trashy kind of dimestore paperback, the kind you don’t ever admit to reading.

And it surprises her because H.G. just always comes across as really highbrow, above that sort of thing. He lives as much in Edgar’s library as he does in his own workshop.

But...this book looks as though it’s been read more than once. The spine is all cracked, with those thin white lines running in even stripes up the side that show exactly where it’s been broken. When Lenore has risked opening it – only at times when H.G. isn’t looking, of course – she sees that there are creases on most of the pages. Some of them are dog-eared as well, with notes in the margins made in H.G.’s slightly messy, narrow handwriting. What little the book has in way of plot makes her blush, which is saying something because Lenore isn’t easily embarrassed about things like that.

There’s also a half-naked lady on the cover who looks suspiciously like her.

***

At moments like this, you've just got to throw yourself into something to take your mind off of whatever it is you’re trying to forget – or avoid. Lenore would usually try some kind of really complicated hairstyle, or go shopping. (She likes secondhand stores the best, because the clothes there have a history just like she does.)

It might be - no, scratch that, it _definitely_ is - a bad idea, but she decides to throw herself into helping H.G. with that weird machine. She could tell herself that it's exposure therapy, but in reality it's just an excuse to spend more time with him.

He's still got this awkward hesitancy. She can get as close as she wants, but he'll only accept it up to a point.

The machine has some kind of connection to time travel, maybe. He's annoyingly vague about it. Regardless, there's an easy rhythm to the system that they’ve slowly set up over time. All H.G. has to do is give her a certain gesture or certain nod, and she'll know right away that she has to hand him a wrench, or wipe oil from the gears so he can lock them into place. The way he smiles at her is worth it. It's basically the nonverbal equivalent to calling her his dear.

Time keeps flowing on, continuing like this. It gives Lenore purpose, to be working on something, instead of the sort of aimlessness she had before. Something to look forward to each day. And it's especially great because now it feels like they're getting somewhere. The machine, whatever it is or does, is starting to make hopeful beeping noises. Evidently that's a good sign because H.G. seems really excited about it.

She hands him a wrench and a lever-thing and he smiles at her before continuing to fiddle with the machine. Lenore got him to paint it purple, which seems like a nice touch. And not a girly purple (he did have that requirement), but this really rich, dark color that makes for an excellent contrast with the bits that stick out, all of them silver. 

"Now just - one - more - " H.G. says, applying pressure to the left side of the machine where a particularly finnicky gear has been lurking. And oh god he's making that grunting/groaning sound again. Lenore has gotten pretty good at suppressing her feelings and her physical responses to whatever he does, but right now it's difficult to control.

He just looks so...satisfied, that's all. A heady, throbbing warmth absorbs her while she watches him work.

Finally, smoke blooms up and curls around them. "Is this a good thing?" Lenore asks, waving a hand in front of her face so her makeup doesn't, like, melt off.

"Yes. It is a _very_ good thing," H.G. responds. He smiles at her.

"Why?"

"Because, my dear Lenore, this is the machine that brought me back to you."

Silence. That's a good silence, though. It gives her time to fully realize what he just said. That he wanted to fix, to preserve, something that was important to him. Something that binds them together.

Which is when things hit fast-forward really fast.

He backs her up against one of the steamer trunks and wedges his thigh between her legs. It's bizarre, because even though she's wearing a dress, she can feel that. The tiniest bit of friction that just seems to heighten every single sensation. How her pulse starts hammering hard when he kisses her neck. He registers the slightest amount of surprise before continuing, just rutting his thigh up against her every so often while he kisses her. It’s teasing, tantalizing pressure that changes every time he shifts against her. Lenore rocks back down in response, chasing after it.

She wants to ask him what's happening, why she feels like this. That he can do this to her. It's completely broken up every notion she had of what it means to be a ghost. She knows that ghosts tend to haunt things that matter to them. It's why she still hangs out with Edgar, because they've been friends for the _mumble mumble_ amount of time that she's been living here - and even before that. Besides, they've got this sort of unspoken agreement that Edgar is going to haunt her after he dies, and therefore pay her back for all the pranks she's pulled. (Lenore is actually looking forward to that, mostly because she's just super curious about what Edgar might be like as a ghost. She always crosses her fingers that he's not going to be as boring as he is now.)

But this, this is the opposite of haunting. It's - it reminds her of the kinds of things that H.G. does, the little ways he keeps himself human. H.G. is making her human again, too.

Maybe she's doing the same to him. He groans every time she rocks herself back down on his thigh.

There’s a contrast, Lenore realizes, between the H.G. that gives her those quiet little hellos and asks so politely for the soup when they have dinner. _This_ H.G. is whispering in her ear, telling her all of these filthy things he probably picked up from that dimestore paperback. It doesn’t matter, though, because he says them in this desperate, urgent voice that’s dark and almost aggressive. It makes her completely short-circuit, taken by surprise with just how much it works for her.

And this H.G. is…he’s, like, _pawing_ at her now. He grabs at her chest with one hand, greedy, and tries to search for her under her dress with the other. There’s so much of it in the way that it makes him mutter in frustration. He’s moved his thigh, now, and Lenore can actually _feel_ the absence. It leaves her pulsing and waiting as the balance tips and he goes back to kissing her. With a little huff of frustration, Lenore hikes up her skirt so it's all bunched up and gathered in her hands. It gives him easier access to reach back between her legs and start massaging her.

She’s a complete mess – she’s just dripping all over his fingers and smearing into her underwear. It makes the fabric slippery and move slickly against her body, trapped between herself and his hand. And she’s panting, determined to take anything and everything that he’s going to give her right now, but even that doesn’t seem like enough. She wants to beg him to make her break apart because she’s this close to shattering -

Her hair is messy, too, curls damp against her neck. Sticky sweat dripping down to slide between her breasts and she’s so, so wet, driving herself against his hand, futile, because her underwear is _still_ in the way.

And the whole thing is awkward - her hands are still holding her dress up for him, so all she can do is twist and writhe, bucking up against him even though she just wants more than anything to just hold him back, hold his hand as he finally, finally, slides her underwear down her legs. The fabric slides wet and slow because he’s using just the one hand. She feels sticky-wet and a bit cold, even, now. Waiting.

“Please –” and it comes out incoherent because she only half-knows what she’s asking for, only that she’s mumbling, moaning, so he can’t possibly hear her. But he does, he must have, because he’s got this, got her - pushing his fingers inside her and she feels so very, very full all of a sudden. She can only concentrate on his right hand moving inside her and the way he uses his left hand to tug down the strap of her dress so now she’s really sloppy, about the furthest thing from a lady ghost as it’s possible to be.

But that just doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how he twists his hand, as if curious, and oh god that – it makes her shudder, a full-body feeling that localizes and spreads, localizes and spreads. She wants him to keep going but isn’t sure she would be able to ask for that if she tried.

As if they’re on the same wavelength, he thrusts his fingers up, then, deeper inside her. Lenore whimpers, overcome with the sudden shock, sudden satisfaction. She can’t help it, she just starts dripping again. It slides out of her: slow, thick, and wet, coating his fingers and pooling in the spaces between them. Something dark and dizzying coils up inside her. Like she’s never been this human before, and might never be again. Every sense seems like it’s been turned way up. She feels almost pulpy, swollen.

He kisses his way up her neck to reach her mouth. Close-mouthed kisses, but not for long – she slides her tongue into his mouth kinda sneakily. It makes him groan. This tiny eager sound, not so far off from the way he sounds when he’s working, and it just makes Lenore feel buzzy, lightheaded. Because he’s still touching her – hand sometimes still, sometimes beckoning inside her, and they’re kissing, and it’s almost too much all at once. Push and pull, this smooth little glide of their tongues together. Out of nowhere, the word _smooch_ appears in Lenore’s mind. Maybe something she read in one of those super girly magazines she likes to read. (Like, _Ten Ways to Kiss Boys to Make Them Go Crazy!_ ) It’s a fitting word, though, because it’s the sound of their lips meeting and then coming apart over and over again. (And it seems like she’s doing a perfectly good job of making H.G. go crazy, magazine articles aside, because he’s whimpering now.) Her mind is foggy, her limbs loose as she continues to sway against him. She’s pushed herself up on her tiptoes, just so she can better follow and better respond to his kisses.

“I want…” she moans against his mouth. They stop kissing, then. Now they’re just breathing, very close together. Breaths and heartbeats and everything they should not, cannot, be, but are regardless because of whatever this is.

“I want,” Lenore says again, because she can’t really think of anything else to say. And besides, it is the truest thing. She’s consumed by it, the wanting.

She scrabbles a hand down his body to grope at him through his trousers. “I – I get to touch you, too.”

There’s still smoke around them, coming from the machine. It’s a curtain, making this a secret thing. Or something that can’t possibly be real. Lenore feels outside of herself. Not like when she became a ghost and left herself behind, or the way she’s now caught between ghost and human, whatever it is that H.G. makes her. Outside of herself, like she’s watching what’s happening as though it’s a movie played on a reel, projecting fuzzily.

His right hand gets sandwiched between them, now. He’s _still_ touching her and it makes her so raw, absorbed in fierce points of pleasure that shift and catch and change. And his left hand is frozen at her shoulder, paused from where he was holding her tight so he could get the right leverage to kiss her more deeply.

H.G. catches his breath, warm against her mouth, when she finally curves her hand against him, to find him already thick and full. Hot and pulsing, even through the fabric, and she can feel him twitch ever so slightly when she gives him a cautious squeeze.

He trails kisses down her neck and holds on tight to her arm, presses even closer when she squeezes him again. Now it’s his turn to say “I want” just as desperate as she’d been. So she does, sliding his belt out of its loops where it makes a _snick_ sound before clattering to the floor. Too loud - they pause, waiting for footsteps, waiting for the creak of floorboards, waiting for Edgar or Annabel to come up and ask just what it is they’re doing.

Lenore doesn’t think that either of them would be able to answer that question. Sure, there’s the obvious - the way H.G. is now thrusting against the grip of her hand. Twisting, panting, moving his hips because he wants _more_ and wants it from _her_ and the idea is kind of making her dizzy.

But there’s something beyond this, too. The sweet, sweet way he goes back to kissing her. The contented little moaning sigh when she starts squeezing him just a bit harder. Tracing the shape of him, again, again. And it gets to the point where he’s just thrusting himself into her hand. Basically dry-humping - except not anymore, not entirely. He’s leaking...something, something that makes him slide, sticky, in her hand.

Just as it feels like they’re hurtling towards some kind of end, he pulls back. Shuddering. “I, I’m sorry. I can’t.”

***

He does a pretty good job of not talking to her in the days (or maybe weeks, Lenore really doesn’t pay attention to time) that follow. About, like, _anything_ , but especially about That Thing They Almost Sort of Did. Even dinners are silent, now. Edgar and Annabel at one end of the table, H.G. at the other, and Lenore caught awkwardly in between.

He doesn’t even ask for the soup anymore.

***

Lenore is a curious person. (Ghost? Being?) It's her curiosity that tends to get her into trouble. She just does things to see what would happen if they did.

Maybe this is another thread she can pull.

She remembers that when H.G. isn’t in his workshop, he’s holed up in Edgar’s library. H.G. has slowly imported not only his own writing (god, those two self-absorbed kids – Lenore both hates and loves it, since she can be kinda self-absorbed, too) but also all kinds of other books. Encyclopedias that cover _everything_. Mystery novels, biographies, and even more than that besides. (Like that dimestore paperback, although Lenore hasn’t seen it around his workshop lately. Not that she’s been in there lately, so who knows.)

So that’s where she goes looking for him. Sure enough, he’s sitting very properly in the big overstuffed armchair in the corner. Feet planted firmly on the floor, not kicked up over the side like she would do. And he’s got that forehead crease because he’s holding the book very, very carefully.

“What do you mean, you ‘can’t’,” Lenore asks, going straight for the jugular right away.

He drops the book, then, and gazes at her with a curious, studying expression. “Lenore, I –”

“You didn’t seem like that much of a coward when you were all up in my business the other day,” Lenore continues, floating closer.

She knows putting it that way is crass and unfair. It trivializes the whole thing when it certainly didn’t felt trivial before now. _her skirt hiked up, his hands grabbing at her, pushing inside her -_

But that’s the way he’s playing it now, acting like things don’t matter, so she can do that, too. Give as good as she gets.

“Lenore, there are things about being a ghost that I have yet to learn,” H.G. says, slow and cautious. He doesn’t look at her, now, but instead focuses on his hands like they’re the most fascinating things in the universe and he’s never seen them before. Lenore tries not to blush, remembering the easy way he touched her. “My ethereal form,” he continues, “has achieved much of what my human self could not, but there are certain things in particular that –”

“What things? Touching me? Why is it you’re ok with that one day and then suddenly you’re not? You can’t just keep using me as your afterlife experiment zone,” Lenore snaps.

He seems startled by that. “I never thought of you as an afterlife experiment zone.”

H.G. looks so sad when he says that that Lenore suddenly feels really guilty. Her fragile little heart throbs to life and then fades out again.

“Then what did you think of me as?”

It’s a question left hanging in the air, as floating and transparent as any ghost.

“You’re – you’re Lenore. You’re my dear, dear Lenore and I – I want you so much that it scares me,” H.G. finally admits. “Because when I’m around you, I feel human again.”

“You do that to me, too,” Lenore replies quietly.

He looks up at her again and gives her that happy, slightly crooked smile that she loves.

Things don’t move in fast-forward, then. More slow, drawn out, lingering. When he kisses her this time, it’s just a little question, the smallest of greetings. Quiet and curious, just like he’s always been with her, and it makes Lenore feel a different kind of wanting. Not needy and raw and desperate, but just – is it possible to want something you already have, something you only half-knew was already there waiting?

Perhaps. Whatever it is, it’s this warm, safe thing. Enveloping as the smoke from his machine.


End file.
